


If You Never Try Then You'll Never Know

by shealynn88



Category: Dancing with the Stars (US) RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-23
Updated: 2013-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-24 08:44:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/937957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shealynn88/pseuds/shealynn88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their contemporary routine is a bigger challenge than Kelly had ever imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Never Try Then You'll Never Know

When the cameras finally leave them to get down to the reality of practice Val collapses into a chair, his legs nearly straight in front of him, his bare feet spread to either side of her. His sexy, suggestive demeanor has faded now that the cameras are gone, and she misses the light-hearted comfort of it.

“You have the sex down, and that's good - for the Cha Cha,” he says. “But we need _emotion_. For contemporary, it can't just be...” His fingers spread and twitch, looking for the right wording. “Lip service.”

She lowers her eyes, gazing at him suggestively through her eyelashes. “Are you saying you don't _like_ lip service?”

He throws up his hands. “You see? You talk, but you don't _feel_.” He thumps his palm once against his bare chest.

Her lips thin in irritation and she drops the act. “No one _else_ seems to be complaining.” His quiet composure is infuriating. Knowing he's right is worse.

He looks up at her, serious. “Kelly.”

She forestalls him with a gesture. “I know.” She steps closer until he puts his hands on her hips to pull her toward him, and she lays her hand on his head as he presses his forehead to her stomach. “I know,” she repeats softly.

She can't do what he's asking. If she opens herself to it, she's not sure if she'll be able to close it off again.

But she's not ready to see his disappointment, so she just strokes his head absently and closes her eyes and pretends that all of this is real, and not just a role they're playing for the American public.

 

 

 

 

“No, _no_ ,” he says, turning away in frustration. “I see _steel_ when I look at you. I get sex and steel.” He mimics her, turning quickly, ankle at a ninety degree angle. It's precise and lovely, and she wants to scream at him – _what's_ wrong _with that?_

“It's _pretty_ , you see?” He moves closer and touches her face with two fingers. She forces herself to smile at him. “It can't be pretty. It has to _hurt_.”

He moves away and does the spin again, moving as if he's broken, as if his will to live is slowly draining away, and it brings tears to her eyes.

Standing in front of her again, he holds her arms gently. His long fingers curl and meet around her biceps, and his intensity makes it feels like she'll have his fingerprints burned into her forever.

His voice is quiet when he asks her, “Haven't you ever been hurt so deeply you thought you might never heal?”

Her breath goes out of her in a rush, and she tears herself out of his arms and runs for the dressing room before he can see her cry.

 

 

 

She's only half dressed when he strides into her dressing room like he belongs there.

She raises an eyebrow and spreads her arms to let him take in the view. This part is easy – she's been doing it all her life. “If you wanted to get a better look, all you had to do was ask.”

“Put on your shirt,” he tells her shortly, watching her as she does.

“Extra practice?” she asks, trying to keep the uncertainty out of her voice. He's impossible to read.

He shrugs, watching her intently, eyes unapologetically watching her hips, and then her fingers as she buttons her shirt, and then he meets her eyes and something, God, _something_ is blazing there like fire. Something that isn't quite lust or anger, but maybe something in between. Something that makes her weak in the knees.

He takes her hand and yanks her out of the dressing room and through a back exit, avoiding the cameras and crew, and he hails a taxi. He's uncharacteristically quiet and she tries not to fidget as he gives the driver an address and sits back, still clasping her hand.

 

 

 

“Drink,” he tells her, lining up eight shot glasses on the coffee table in front of her and filling them with vodka.

“If you're trying to get me into bed, you're going about it all wrong,” she tells him, eying the shot glasses suspiciously.

He smiles grimly. “If I was trying to get you into bed, we'd already be there.”

She raises an eyebrow, not sure if she should be offended or amused.

“I'm _trying_ to get to know you. The real you. Not the sexy girl next door you give to the cameras.”

She pouts. “You don't think I'm real?”

He points vaguely at her, finger drawing a line through her chest and back across her hips. “Your body does not lie.” He picks up a shot glass from the end of the line and hands it to her, then takes one for himself. “Now. Drink.” He downs his quickly and stares at her until she follows.

“You're wasting valuable practice time,” she tells him, pushing the fear down as he hands her another shot. Nothing will come of this, she reassures herself. Nothing at all.

As much as she secretly hopes it will; as much as she dreads it.

“I'm wasting nothing. Drink.”

 

 

 

 

“This isn't real,” she tells him finally. The room is spinning and she's too warm and every bit of her is too sensitive. Too late, she realizes that this was a terrible idea.

He tips his head against the couch. “What's not real about this?” he asks her, and his voice has that quiet serious tone that makes her want to kiss him. He trails a finger against her shoulder, his eyes following it's path, and she forgets how to speak for a long moment.

She finds her voice, finally. “You and me. This. Isn't. Real.” She's not really trying to convince _him_. He knows. He must. He dances like this with his partner, with all of his former partners. He has the moves and the flirting and the self-deprecation – he has everything down. He's one of the best actors she's worked with.

But when he holds her it feels real, and she knows it's not, and it's tearing her fucking heart out.

He shifts closer, his knee folded under him so he's facing her. He looks so sincere with those dark, sympathetic eyes. It hurts to look at him.

“Kelly. Tell me what's bothering you. Really. What is that pain that's balled up so tight in you that you can't breathe when I show it to you?”

Her chest seizes up again as she remembers watching him spin, broken and beautiful and heart-wrenching. She hugs herself as if she can cover her visceral reaction, but his eyes fill with compassion, and she swallows desperately to keep from crying.

He takes her face in his hands, stroking his thumbs over her cheekbones, and she can't keep it separate in her head anymore.

“I don't fall in love, Val. I did it once, and it almost killed me.” Her words sound hollow in her ears, meaningless, but she lets them out anyway, pretending they make sense. Pretending she's not asking him to love her anyway.

He leans in and she thinks he might kiss her, but he stops just short – close enough that she can feel his breath against her lips. “You think it's easy for me?”

Her heart stutters, stops, feels like a stone in her chest as she struggles not to _hope_. “What?” The question comes out as breath. She tries again. “What do you mean?”

“Look at you.” His eyes are full of emotion – the opposite of the lightness he shows to the camera. He is full of heat and weight and darkness. “You joke about sleeping with me, with Maks, but when I try to find _you_ under all that talk...you keep slipping away.”

She searches his eyes. “We're just an act,” she says, because she has to, because this wall cannot come down. Not after years of building it up. Not after Michael.

“Are we?” he asks, his voice harsh.

When he kisses her, it's a slow brush of his lips against hers and something inside her screams for her to run, now, before it's too late.

But he sparks some ember she hasn't quite managed to put out, and as it quickens and grows into a flame she presses back, savoring the way his fingers tense and curve against her face as she slants her mouth and opens her lips against him.

He runs his tongue slowly against her incredibly sensitive mouth and then pulls back slightly. “Tell me it's not just me,” he says softly. She hears the fear in his voice, begging not to be hurt.

“It's not,” she tells him. “It's not just you.”

 

 

 

The personas are the same – he is light-hearted and doting and he presses his lips to her hair and keeps his arm around her as they wait. It's all for the fans, for the votes, for the cameras.

But the dance is theirs, and she forgets about acting. She moves the way he taught her, and lets herself feel the fear she's been hiding for years, and wonders if it's as painful to watch as it is to dance.

Hidden under the curtain of her hair, she kisses him onstage. Her lips press hard enough to bruise. It's a thanks and a promise and a fearful recognition of how far she's come, and how far she has to go.

He returns it gently, and another tear falls.

When he lifts her up to carry her down the stairs, the tears are flowing and her foot is throbbing and her heart is pounding. She's exhilarated.

The personas are the same, but below the frame of the camera she grips his hands and he holds her up, and nothing has ever felt more real.  



End file.
